NC State assistant coach Fancher met with Andrew Sanders and Ernie Myers of the Wolfpack Sports Network after the 103-98 overtime loss to No. 9 Oklahoma.
Well, Coach Moore is unable to join us tonight, but Houston Fancher had the scout tonight. Coach, just your initial thoughts on this overtime loss.
Oh, yeah, it's tough. You never, when you come into a situation like this on the road in a hostile environment against a top 10 team, sometimes where we were as a team not really sure what to expect. And I think tonight we passed with flying colors.
I thought they competed their tails off. We had an opportunity to win a basketball game down the stretch, put ourselves in that position by the way we played for three quarters and into four quarters. Unfortunately, they got some big-time offensive rebounds against us and camped out in the paint down there.
Nothing was called in the paint three-second-wise, and we weren't able to take advantage of that. But really excited and proud about the way we rebounded from where we played last time.
Hey, Coach, again, you mentioned I thought that Oklahoma was a lot more aggressive on the baseline. I thought the refs let them get away with a lot of aggressiveness on the baseline.
What were your thoughts in regards to that? It was a very physical game, Ernie, and, especially in the second half when things got tight. I thought the whistle stopped a little bit too down in the paint.
Got them some offensive rebounds that we had been pulling down. But once again, I mean, we rebounded the ball well, against a team that was obviously that outsized us and has some, it's a really good team. It's a really good team.
We put ourselves in a position to win that basketball game. But like you say, they got some finishers around the rim that we didn't do a good job of competing against. And it's hard for me to, nobody, Coach Moore, nobody likes to lose a basketball game.
But with the growth of this team, that was an encouraging sign tonight with where we're going with these new people and to see the way we competed. We scored 98 points and hit three threes, and that's not one of our teams. I was just about to ask you about that.
You're plus nine on the boards against a team that can rebound like that. But you're talking about the fight of this team. To be on the road at a top ten opponent on a night where you don't shoot the ball well from three, and at least in our opinion, felt like you got some good looks. It wasn't going in tonight. To still be in a position to win the basketball game, that's what gives you some confidence moving forward.
It does, and our guards played with confidence tonight until Zoe and Z both attacked and made plays. I thought Khamil was fantastic. Again, Tilda really competed. We got some good minutes off the bench from people. Like I say, as this team continues to mature and grow, I think you're seeing some of that tonight on the road in a tough environment. To me, when I did this scout, I felt like it was the best team on our schedule this year.
Wow. Between them and TCU, I think probably the best two teams on our schedule, certainly in a non-conference. And this is a team that's going to win a lot of basketball games, going to be playing deep into the tournament just because of the players they have and the system they play with.
Their freshman was really, really good tonight. She had 30 there. We decided to start trapping the ball thin, and she finished with 33.
So we did a good job of taking her out, but that's when their inside game sort of took over a little bit. But still, going into it, we got the ball with nine seconds of a chance to finish the game in regulation and weren't able to get a good look off our inbounds plays. Credit to them on that.
But once again, I'm not going to walk out here disparaging anything that we did because they left all they had on the floor out here tonight. And as long as they do that every night, we'll win our share of games.
Coach, I do want to ask you about that last possession. You get the stop. I'm sure you wanted the timeout. I think you all were hollering for the timeout before it was dribbled. You don't get to advance it. Can you just take me through? There was only 11 seconds left in the game, but a lot happened between then and the end. You end up not getting a shot. What were you looking for? What did you maybe do well defensively?
I assume you're talking about regulation? Well, you go back and look at it, and Zoe may have had a chance just to take it on without a timeout potentially. But at the same time, you want to have control of that. And we wanted to make sure we got the last shot. We didn't want to shoot it too soon.
They get it back, have a chance to come back down and score. So, coach had a timeout. And then we knew and anticipated they were going to play zone on the inbounds, which was what they'd done the majority of the time.
It got kicked out of bounds. Coach Moore called timeout once underneath, and he thought he called it before they threw it inbounds. And he set a play up underneath. Actually, they called the timeout once it came inbounds, so it got us in the corner. Right. And we had to throw that late.
Khamil got it, got trapped down there, and wasn't able to get it back to Z, which potentially we think could have been open, but she didn't get the ball to her in time. So it went to overtime from there. So that's those situations you learn over and over in practice that when you get in these
games, you want to be prepared to do those things.
And, for the most part they did. And you've got to credit sometimes Oklahoma defended as well and made it tough on us. But at the same time, as a coach, you want to say, man, do we have a chance to put them in a better position to win that basketball game, down the stretch there in those last seconds.
But once again, Andrew Ernie, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I'm really proud, and I know Coach Moore is too, of the effort, the intensity they played with. And the start we got off to is 10-10 to start the game out, so we didn't cower down early on. We led for 27, 28 minutes of the game and against a very good team on the road who doesn't lose very many games here. So, got a lot accomplished tonight, I felt like.
You've been around this program and been to a Final Four. You've had a lot of success. You've had head coaching experience as well. You've been around a lot of good teams. But you have good experience.
This is a tough opponent you draw because you had so much success in the regular season last year as the regular season champs. But the games that you guys scheduled early on to play one of the toughest schedules in the country, you get this one tonight.
I know you don't get the result you wanted, but what do these experiences mean? Because you're talking about the growth of the team from what we saw even a couple weeks ago to TCU to now. What kind of dividends do these games pay later on in the season whether you get a win tonight or not?
This will be a typical ACC game on the road against good teams we play when I go to Duke or go to Miami or wherever where the games are physical and you've got to find a way to win on the road. So I think these things callous you a little bit. Yes.
So we talked about this in our meeting room two weeks ago that this team has to learn how to win down the stretch. You've got to learn how to win games, not just compete and play throughout the games. When it comes to the last two, three minutes, you've got to know how to win in winning time.
Now earlier, the Rhode Island game, I felt like maybe in the TCU game, we made some losing plays down the stretch. I felt like today we made more winning plays down the stretch. So we're learning, we're growing, we're coming.
So it's a team that I think has got a lot to look forward to as long as they continue to compete and prepare for games like they did on this road trip. We've got confidence in Cancun. We were able to play a couple good games over there and got our offense rolling, got some people confident against Southern Miss in that last game.
I thought that carried over to this. Yes. Now we've got to be able to do that. We've got two conference games coming up here after Seton Hall, so that's where our season really starts. So like you said, we've played these games to be in preparation for those games. So we've got to come back and play Seton Hall with the same type of intensity that we competed with tonight at Oklahoma and then get ourselves prepared for Georgia Tech and Miami and conference games here in December.
